Storm Window Reuse: Cold Frame

Check out this beautiful cold frame built by my brother Simeon using an old wooden storm window from my 1912 Arts and Crafts/Prairie style house. The design is simple, and pretty self explanatory.  Recently I've also used a large storm window over our strawberry box to help the new plants through the cold snap at the beginning of the month (April 2016).

Porch and Columns: Start to Finish

No commentary, just photos!

Patio Project Part 1

Two years ago, our lovely neighbors agreed to include a side yard in our joint fencing project (joint is sort of a stretch; I researched, got quotes, and did demo of old fence, but they financed it all!). In preparation, I demolished the side entrance steps to the house (the door was rendered a dummy with our initial renovation of the kitchen) and removed several bushes.

 

 

One major hurdle was what to do with all of the dirt I'd be digging out. Having a bit of landscaping experience from high school, I know that a firm stone and sand base is pretty key to any patio\paver project. I posted to Craigslist and started asking around. A local landscaping supply company that I planned on buying materials from thought "maybe" the owner would let me dump the topsoil for a fee, and I'd be on my own getting it there. That was a no go. It turned out a colleague and friend from school was looking for topsoil to fill in an area of their lawn- and had a trailer! It was a mutually beneficial swap, Mike!

 

A major downspout is located in the middle of the patio area, and after digging about 6 inches, I realized I would have to lower the drainage pipe further than I had last year. I installed a hard PVC elbow below the downspout, linking to a black plastic drain pipe with large holes on the underside to allow for drainage into the soil. The pipe was seated on small rocks and sand. The end of the drain pipe is buried in rocks right at the edge of the sidewalk. When there's a significant amount of rain, water makes it to the end and bubbles up and over the sidewalk, watering the tree we just had planted along the curbside this spring.

 

It was sad\fun to dig up portions of the old French drain from the original building of the house. You can see pretty clearly why this one wasn't working so well anymore.

 

Once I had dug out and leveled the ground using mason's twine and a level, I laid down weed barrier cloth, swayed by my Pop (Laura's father). This was a last minute decision as I am not a huge proponent of weed barrier especially when used in flower beds. Here,  I couldn't think of a downside and thought it we had a weed issue 2-5 years down the road I might be wondering if I had made a mistake in not using it. 

 

Over the weed barrier, I laid about 2.5 inches of "stone dust." The name is a little misleading because you can't see a lot of the dust- it settles down through the tiny bits of crushed stone- especially after being rained on. I was amazed at how after spreading, leveling, and tamping this base how hard the surface became once we had a good rain. I think the dust settles down through the crushed stone and hardens a bit. You can buy polymeric stone dust, but that's more expensive and wasn't necessary for my project. I suspect it might be more applicable to a pavers project.

 

A year ago, a neighbor was giving away about 2-3 cubit yards of sand left over from a building project. Knowing that we'd be doing something like a patio in the side yard- and also wanting to give the kids a sandbox- I bagged the whole pile of sand and had a few friends help me move them via car 4 blocks to my house. When my buddy Warren asked how much the bags weighed prior to helping, I said, "Oh, 20-30 pounds or so." He was pretty shocked when we started moving them, and after some logical reasoning got me to admit that they were more like 50-60 or more pounds per bag! I still get teased any time the subject of the sand comes up. But I can point out that I saved us, let's see... maybe $100.

 

The sand has proven very useful in leveling, especially from mold to mold as you can see in the picture below. Phil (my Pop) and Laura are spreading the Quickrete concrete in the WalkMaker mold. We used the fact that Pop Pop and Mom Mom were up visiting for Memorial Day weekend to get started on the concrete since we'd have an extra hand with the kiddos.

 

Working the concrete into the molds is tedious. We are using a small trough to push the concrete in the corners and level each stone. However, the results are very promising. Below, you can see a total of six molds fitted together, which took us about three hours. Convinced that this project was going to be successful, we ordered 60 additional bags of concrete delivered on a pallet. As of writing, we're up to about 1/3 finished. Part 2 to include the staining and sealing process...

An Upcycled Wooden Play Kitchen for Jericho!

 

Happy Birthday Jericho!

As our daughter turned two last week, we were able to give her a really awesome present. Inspired a while ago from a Pinterest posting, Laura suggested we find a small cabinet at Goodwill or Resource York to turn into a play kitchen. But as it turns out, the perfect start to this project was already in our house: a section from the upper cabinets over the fridge in the old upstairs bedroom (in the process of becoming Jericho's new room). Follow along in the transformation!

 

1) An old cabinet

 

 

 

                    2) With one door turned vertical and new shelving added

 

3) A "backplash" and the "stovetop" added

 

 

 

4) Trimmed out                                     



 

 

5) Painting in progress

 

 

6) Final details including sink and burners

 

Cheese!

 

 

With just a few exceptions,

 everything in this project was recycled or we already owned.

 

Hardware from the cabinets was reused, the backsplash was made with plywood and 2x4s rescued from a demo project in the basement, the trim came from the old kitchen on the first floor and leftovers in the garage from the 1970s basement finishing job. All of the paint we already owned, used in our real kitchen. The shelf was made of the bottom of a cabinet drawer and the wheels were mounted on recycled 2x4s. The stove insulation was a leftover scrap from our kitchen remodel and finally, the wire baskets inside the stove and on the side came from our restored 1950s MacDougall built-ins. We bought: 4 wheels, epoxy, two wooden knobs and two flat wooden cut-outs, and a dog bowl.